You are not alone!

customers served (give or take a few hundred thousand) since September 2004!

Comments and opinions expressed on THE KNIGHT SHIFT are those of Christopher Knight and not necessarily those of subjects discussed in this blog, of advertisers appearing on it or of any reasonable human being. Any correspondence/irate letters/lawsuit threats/Nigerian e-mail scams can be sent to theknightshift@gmail.com.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

You might have heard by now about the recent controversy surrounding Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anybody can edit at any time (here's a story at The Register about it, which Wikipedia users responded to less than an hour later by creating an entry for "moral responsibility"). In theory, Wikipedia is a good idea. It guarantees an ever-increasing body of knowledge to use as a reference. This past week I wound up making two edits - and substantially increasing one article - on the site. I've found myself using it on a regular basis... but only as an introduction to whatever I'm looking up info on. Because as this whole mess regarding John Seigenthaler has proven, there ultimately is no oversight at Wikipedia besides what the users provide. Maybe they should let Encyclopedia Brown run the Wikipedia website.

Needless to say, this just begs to be parodied somehow. It was from the article at The Register that I discovered the existence of Uncyclopedia, "the content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", currently boasting over 16,000 entries. I've spent a lot of this morning already giggling at some of the stuff posted here. Check out their entry on Wikipedia: "a tragic parody of Uncyclopedia, although Wikipedia claims the reverse." I might have to spend some time working on the entries on this now that I know about it :-)